A Crisis Of Conservative Compassion

On Twin Crises, Alike In Dignity

There’s been two simmering crises for parties of the political right internationally these days - the Australian right’s battles over climate policy and Net Zero, and the unofficial leadership battle underway for Erin O’Toole’s job in Canada. Superficially, they seem to be about very different things - one is a government trying to decide its policy, and the other is the squabbles of the losers of an election - but at their core, they’re the same crisis. The right has to try and make peace with two coalitions, one of well-off social liberals who look to the future with optimism, and one which looks to the past longingly. And, in both cases, those coalitions are coming apart at the seams. Even beyond that, though, the problem is not just two different groups wanting different things, but the problem is the death of conservative compassion.

…

Conservatives, and especially those compelled to the cause by their religion, like to think of themselves as compassionate people. Talk to many conservatives about why they’re conservatives and they won’t dismiss the idea of community or compassion or solidarity, but they’ll express it in a way foreign to urban liberals. These people tell themselves that they want the same outcomes, and in many cases it’s true that conservatives are willing to step up in crisis and chaos. The problem is, conservatives like to talk about their compassion, but the people they extend that compassion to is narrow, and compassion is extended on their terms, or not at all.

Ask the gay son of a religious, conservative family whether the compassion that is often showed by that family to neighbours, fellow parishers, and those in need was extended to them when they came out as gay, and you might be lucky to get more than a hollow laugh. I fortunately avoided that outcome, but it’s a story as old as time itself. Conservatives like to talk a good game about honour and decency and compassion, but so often, their compassion runs out at the time it is needed most. And now, in many ways, it has run out.

I like to avoid trivialities on this site, but what’s the connective tissue between Let’s Go Brandon and January 6th? One is an extremely online meme, basically, and one I don’t understand, honestly, and the other was an attack on America itself, but they both come from the same place. Self-described conservative patriots in both cases rallied to causes that you could only think were reasonable or legitimate if you believe Democrats and liberals are your enemies, not your neighbours. Let’s Go Brandon is the new Lock Her Up, a set of words designed to show your place in a movement, and in both cases, it is a movement that is fundamentally without compassion for anyone not like them.

You can make the argument that liberals are as intolerant as the right, but that argument falls flat for two reasons - one, men and white people are not protected classes, but more importantly, the hate starts with the right. I do not fear for my well being when I’m in a room full of rich, white social liberals, and I will never go back to wide swathes of culturally conservative America for the inverse reason. When Justin Thomas said faggot at January’s Tournament of Champions, I was devastated that this athlete I loved so dearly could say that, but also I wasn’t surprised by it. Thomas was raised in Kentucky, went to university at Bama, and went to a famous, Catholic, all-male high school. No fucking shit that guy grew up in a cesspool of homophobia and hatred.

The problem for conservatives is that their views are shrinking, and they are not the majority - in 2020, the GOP only kept it close nationally because they do better with social liberals than the Democrats do with social conservatives. Biden won voters who think abortion should be legal in all or most cases by 45%, while Trump won those who think it should be mostly or wholly illegal by 58%. In Australia, the right won in 2019, but they did so with an almost 2016 Trump-esque needle thread - they did badly (but not badly enough) in their urban and suburban seats, but got all the benefits in the regional areas. Extend that trend to the next election, and you’re likely to see that trick fail them this time, as urban and suburban seats in Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth look likely to fall. In Canada, the Tories are locked out of government under their current policy coherence, and are about to launch the full civil war they need to fight.

The problem underlying all of this is the lack of conservative compassion for those who aren’t straight white men. There is something to the notion of a community possessed by compassion to aid those in it, and I don’t think that that sort of small town conservatism - get government out of our lives, we can step up for each other ourselves - is necessarily wrong. But it is when that instinct is broken as soon as the people who need your compassion aren’t people you care about anymore.

People talk about division, and I always just laugh, because the politics are divided because the people want contradictory things. The reason why division was lower in the 80s and 90s was because political outcomes mattered less - there was a grand consensus on social issues, and even under Clinton, it’s not like tax policy was running rampant. There was a cozy elite consensus, and then the dual fights over climate and gay rights broke it. Now two parts of the country want two different things, and there’s no way to avoid the fight anymore. The problem is, the right doesn’t think the left is legitimate.

I understand better than the vast majority of liberals why these cultural conservatives have moved away from left wing parties, and I am clear-eyed about what it would take to get them back. I don’t find what they want illegitimate - it is not what I want, and it would be very bad for people like me, but I get it. I give them the benefit of good faith, because I understand what it is that has caused their reaction and I know why it scares them so much. The right extends no such good faith, and that’s the problem.

So certain of their answers, many on the right cannot view women or gays or racial minorities for who they are, but merely what they are. You see it best with LGBT people, because the nature of being gay is that you know how people treated you before they knew, and they how they treat you after. It’s the reason why of my uncles still has no idea his nephew is gay - if I told him, everything would change.

The reason there is so much division - and why the right is in a perilous spot - is that the objects of their anger used to be limited to those racial minorities or gay people or feminists, but now their anger is with everyone who does not see the world the way they do. Democrats and Liberals are not political opponents who love their country and disagree on how to make it better, but they’re the enemies of the people, traitors who need to be locked up, and dictators for their vaccine mandates. How many stories have we seen of unvaccinated persons comparing their plight to that of Jews in the Holocaust in recent weeks, and how many of them do you need to know that the right has lost its mind?

Conservatives have a crisis in two countries because the voters they need and their bases want fundamentally different things. The centre in both Canada and Australia wants Turnbull-esque moderation from the right - pro-action on climate, pro-gay rights, and comfortable with modern society. You might say they want a form of Compassionate Conservatism, as David Cameron used to bang on about. Their bases want Trumpian politics and a return to the past, and their bases are winning. Scott Morrison has the worst climate policy in the G20 because he’s terrified of coal miners voting for Palmer and One Nation if he actually does what he needs to to hold the centre. Erin O’Toole is in a fight to keep his job because he ran an election campaign in the no man’s land between moderation and strident conservatism, and the right is livid and he didn’t win the centre. Either O’Toole will pivot right to keep his job, or he will be replaced by a lunatic of the right, and either way, he will be the perfect emblem of the crisis at the heart of conservative politics right now - a crisis of conservative compassion.